Developing Compassionate Dementia-Inclusive Communities

Abstract

Communities need practical solutions to help persons living with dementia and their care partners age in place with dignity and good quality of life. The purpose of this project is to implement and evaluate an interorganizational compassionate and dementia-inclusive community (CDIC) approach to enhance in-community supports for persons living with dementia. Not-for-profit organizations in six diverse Canadian communities are participating in the project. An implementation toolkit was created to guide communities in building leadership teams through organizational partnerships, develop and implement plans for a CDIC approach, and educate and mobilize volunteer navigators to provide support. Leaders of organizations participating in the CDIC approach were connected in a community of practice to share their learnings. In this paper, we describe the CDIC intervention and provide baseline findings from participating communities.